
#279 – Ted Surrectus
Born 125 BC in Sinope, Ted was raised by circus freaks and has become well known for his talents as an animal whisperer. He was enslaved by the invading Romans and sent to Rome to toil in the gladiator business.
RomanPunks is a retrofuturistic, cyberpunk derivative world-building project inspired by fine art, history and the cryptopunk movement.
A total of 1,000 RomanPunk characters have been frozen in time and minted as Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum, WAX, Polygon and Algorand blockchains.
RomanPunk characters are comprised of commoners and famous individuals based on Roman history, art history and pop culture.
The basis for RomanPunk lore and backstories is exhaustively researched by history/sci-fi buff and co-founder, Punktavian.
All images are drawn by hand by woman artist and co-founder, Cleopunktra, without the aid of AI or generative tools.

RomanPunks came into existence through early minting on OpenSea, promoting on Twitter and building a Discord community through giveaways and engagement. The idea of a cyberpunk-derivative ‘RomanPunk’ theme was in our heads for years, but it was the success of the Cryptopunks that became the catalyst for project conception and launch.

After a hard working first 60 days spent networking and attracting new collectors to RomanPunks, our community had begun to flourish and sales increased. We began to offer our collectors an opportunity to battle their NFTs in a tournament bracket powered by dice rolls.

Encouraged by the tight knit community and the carbon-neutral blockchain with lightning fast and low cost transactions, we launched 'romanpunksio' collection on WAX Blockchain as the first step to expand the backstories of our RomanPunk characters and the baseline for future development of a card game.

RomanPunks integrated with Chainlink Labs to utilize VRF (Verified Randomness Function) to host a giveaway raffle for our holders. We developed a smart contract on Ethereum which guarantees true random number selection on chain and can be used for a wide range of functions that require random selection.
After much anticipation in the community, we released our first WAX NFT card 'pack' through the Neftyblocks platform, which sold out in less than a week.
We launched our Twitch channel and begun building an audience by offering numerous giveaways of WAX NFTs from our collection, as well as giving participants a chance to win RomanPunk ETH NFT airdrops for taking top spot at the end of the 'season'.

As firm believers in a metaverse future and land owners in The Sandbox, we undertook to build the RomanPunk Colosseum on 1x1 land and entered our experience "Gladiator Bloodsport" into a GameJam contest. We will continue to build the Colosseum into a PVP arena and social hub once The Sandbox offers creators the ability to do so.
Thanks to the user friendly tools offered by NeftyBlocks, we launched a comprehensive blending system on WAX, allowing our collectors to blend the common NFTs they earn in our Discord RPG up into Legendary famous NFTs through the use of blending 'coins' that can also be earned on the Discord as reward for helping to promote the RomanPunks project.
We launched the VX collection on Polygon. Each owner of an ETH NFT gets their voxel equivalent airdropped to them, and these NFTs can be redeemed for official NFTs on The Sandbox Marketplace once available.

All 1,000 original, unique 1:1 RomanPunk characters hand drawn by Cleopunktra and minted on OpenSea.

The RomanPunk WAX NFT Trading Card Fighter Pack Series II consists of 3 NFTs randomly selected from over 236 characters.

Upcoming plans for RomanPunks include:
Below is a comprehensive and searchable directory of all 1,000 RomanPunk Characters.

Born 125 BC in Sinope, Ted was raised by circus freaks and has become well known for his talents as an animal whisperer. He was enslaved by the invading Romans and sent to Rome to toil in the gladiator business.

Born 525 AD in Camulodunum, Lanny is a notorious alcoholic cat burglar who audaciously stole from ex-Roman garrisons. A legend among thieves, known for daring heists and unbreakable streak of luck, Lanny spent all his money buying rounds of drinks for entire villages.

Born 160 AD in Caralis, Lola lived a charmed life of revelry until the purges of Commodus caused her to escape through an interdimensional portal to the 22nd century AD. Now holed up in the Neo-Aztec Collective, she unabashedly continues her epicurean indulgences in the vaporwave splendor of Floridia.

Born 141 AD in Burdigala, Lur, an acolyte of the Bishop of Lyon, called out Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ stoic philosophy as heresy and was condemned to toil in the wheat fields as punishment. Despite the enslavement, Lur found solace in his love for animals and the teachings of Jesus Christus.

Born 67 BC in Pella, Aris is Cicero’s true executioner—though the history books credit the deed to Marc Antony’s lackeys. His mind is controlled by a cabal of cyborg Illuminati engaged in time manipulation. Once it was decided Cicero knew too much and had to be extinguished, the cyborgs bent Aris to their will, using his executioner’s axe as the perfect instrument to silence a threat that could have upended their interdimensional dominion.

Born 2055 AD in Spalatum, Nyla is a sanguinarian with a degree in vampire anthropology who works as a disillusioned barista. In her spare time, she seeks an interdimensional portal to ancient Dacia where she hopes to be bitten and turned by a hunky antediluvian nosferatu.

Born 288 AD, Scout was born to parents exiled to Britannia after their defeat by Probus in 278 AD. Having won multiple archery contests, she was captured by time traffickers from a Romanesque 20th century AD alternate dimension to compete as a shopping mall gladiator.

Born in 355 AD on the shores of the Black Sea, Hilda Cixilo was raised in blood by warrior parents who trained them in battles against the Huns. After collecting 80 heads in the Battle of Adrianople, Hilda went on to distinguish herself in Mastaura as an undefeated gladiator.

Born 212 AD in Hispalis, Maxim was slave to a cyborg patrician. Upon learning of his master’s secret he was sent to the gladiator pits; skilled with a knife, became a successful fan favourite who always fought with slurpee in hand.

Born in 295 AD in Tarraco, Spain, Sisera Hispaniola, a convicted murderer, was sent to the gladiator pits as punishment, where he found great success. Fearing his rise in popularity, Emperor Constantine had Sisera thrust into a dimensional portal where he continued to dominate the colosseum in a distant future timeline.

Born 121 BC in Jutland, Cindi was a defiant warrior captured and enslaved by Gaius Marius at the Battle of Vercellae. Refusing to submit to concubinage, she was dispatched to an atomic age alternate dimension where she toils as a scullery maid and comfortess in a high-altitude air cruise liner zeppelin.

Born in 353 BC in the once mighty kingdom of Phrygia, Gordi welcomed the invasion of Alexander the Great, following his conquests through Asia and Egypt where he fell into a dimensional portal and became pressed into the service of a demonic army from a distant time and place.

Born in 249 AD in Colonia, Hartwin Diefenbaker is a lowly soldier from the Alemanni tribe who, when facing defeat at the Battle of Lake Benacus, cowardly fled into the nearby woods only to be taken and experimented on by aliens.

Born 1705 AD in Kyoto, Satoshi, a diplomat, discovered an interdimensional portal while on a trip to Rome and never looked back. He now travels across time and space in search of Shangri-la.

Born in 250 AD in Nicomedia, Galerius was a celebrated general in a Decopunk alternate universe. His life changed drastically in 303 AD when revolutionaries inspired by ‘Roma’ Luxemburg set fire to the imperial palace, trapping him inside. Severely disfigured and presumed dead, Galerius survived, later re-emerging as the enigmatic ‘Phantom of Nicomedia.’ Now veiled in scars, he operates from the shadows, engaging in McCarthyesque methods and experimenting with emergent time travel technology in a vain attempt to undo the tragic events that reshaped his destiny.